The E-Reader: Reviews of E-books, July 27

Updated 2:57 pm, Thursday, July 24, 2014

"The Matters of Life, Death, and More: Writing on Soccer," by Aleksandar Hemon

"The Matters of Life, Death, and More: Writing on Soccer," by Aleksandar Hemon

Photo: FSG Originals

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"I Murdered My Library," by Linda Grant

"I Murdered My Library," by Linda Grant

Photo: Amazon Digital Services

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"Point Lenana," by Nicholas Best

"Point Lenana," by Nicholas Best

Photo: Thistle

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"Twice Eggs," by Alexandra Johnson

"Twice Eggs," by Alexandra Johnson

Photo: Ploughshares Solos

The E-Reader: Reviews of E-books, July 27

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Matters of Life, Death, and More

Writing on Soccer

By Aleksandar Hemon

(FSG Originals; $2.99)

"A sad fact of human existence is that an average life seldom contains more than twenty World Cups - our games are tragically numbered," writes Aleksandar Hemon in his essay "Happy Days Are Here Again."

So what to do now that the 2014 World Cup is over? Keep the party going with "Matters of Life, Death, and More," Hemon's writing on soccer. These 15 pieces combine commentary on a range of games, players and teams dating back to 1974, with reflections on Hemon's own playing days, from the streets of the former Yugoslavia to the frozen fields of his home-in-exile, Chicago.

Holding the pieces together is the MacArthur Award winner's forthright, amusingly cantankerous voice. He questions Diego Maradona's sanity, laments the shortcomings of his beloved teams (Bosnia and Liverpool), and calls David Beckham "arguably the most overrated and overpaid player in the history of sports." He balances his distaste for showboaters and big-spending clubs with praise for players like Lionel Messi, who has a "burning desire to win rather than to be seen as great," and clubs like FC Barcelona, which raises talent within its system. Reading this entertaining, insightful book is like sitting at a bar with the smartest soccer fan you'd ever hope to meet.

Twice Eggs

(Ploughshares Solos; $1.99)

Alexandra Johnson's "Twice Eggs" provides everything you'd want from a great food essay: Her sentences are rhythmic and gorgeous, her descriptions stir the senses, and the location - the rustic kitchens, fields and hills of southern Italy - offers an escape to beauty, romance and history. But it's the romantic history at the core that makes this piece compelling: Though she's now married, Johnson has returned to visit her ex-boyfriend, Giorgio, and the large family that she once nearly joined.

Ostensibly, she has come to help Giorgio with his English as he plans to leave Italy for better job prospects, but the reunion becomes an opportunity for her to reflect on the road not taken. Food memories abound, like the time Giorgio first announced to his mother, Anna, that Alexandra was coming to dinner: "On the phone he'd said he was bringing 'someone,' which meant female. Meant foreign. Meant whore. Our first meal was a platter of boiled beef hearts."

Though she does eventually win the affection of this powerful mother of six, it's a long struggle from interloper to the realization that "it was Anna I'd come to see. In this summer of crossroads, I'd come for something to point the way forward."

By Linda Grant

The title of Orange Prize-winning novelist Linda Grant's essay has a pulp ring to it, as if her subject matter - culling half of her books in an apartment move - needs a more selling hook. There's tension here, but of the quiet sort: Will she keep the American first edition of "Bleak House" that a man bought her 40 years ago, "an apology for going back to his wife"? Will the Dickens, the Moravia, every edition of her own substantial oeuvre be salvaged? What about the books she shoplifted under a hooded black cloak during her school days, or the review copies, the thousands of books that "multiplied ... swarmed ... seemed to reproduce themselves ... a papery population explosion?"

It's not the murder of the books so much as the wit, intelligence and intimacy of Grant's narration that make this piece fascinating - for serious readers primarily but also for anyone who's felt anxiety about donating books or the prospect of the end of the printed word. "In books was life! The great life!" Grant writes, as if to apologize for what she knows she has to do in the name of progress.

Point Lenana

By Nicholas Best

(Thistle; $1.99)

From its opening line - "Two Americans found the body" - to its surprising conclusion, Nicholas Best's novella "Point Lenana" combines love story, war story and colonial clash into a swift-moving read that packs more than 50 years into 55 pages. The body, which hikers discover on Mount Kenya, the second highest in Africa, has been preserved in ice for half a century, and belongs to a German baron named Manfred von Linden.

The point of view shifts to an old woman, Amber de Lisle, in a remote English town who sees on CNN the picture of von Linden in his youth. This triggers her memory of their meeting in 1939 aboard a ship from England to Africa. But just as they're falling for each other, the war begins. Though he's anti-Hitler, Manfred is imprisoned as a German national. With Amber's help, he escapes and makes his way to Abyssinia. Years pass without word, she marries someone else, and inevitably the handsome baron returns. If this sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster in miniature - the world gone mad! Can their star-crossed love endure? - it is. But "Point Lenana" proves the irresistibility of a good old-fashioned story well told.

Porter Shreve's fourth novel, "The End of the Book," was published in February. E-mail: books@sfchronicle.com

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